Categories
evil women funny sex

>Men: Do not be hypontized by Kim Kardashian’s boobies into getting a Kardashian Kard

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Consumerist warns that “the reality show star is pimping a new prepaid debit card targeted at kids” — and, presumably, unwary men easily hypnotized by boobies — “that is as bursting with hidden fees as Kim’s shirt, featured prominently on the plastic, is bursting with integrity.” The card costs $59.95 to purchase (including 6 months of monthly fees); monthly fees (after this initial period) of $7.95; ATM withdrawals are $1.50. There’s also a $9.95 (per boobie) monthly boobie maintenance fee. (Ok, one of those fees is made up.)

Categories
discussion of the day feminism homophobia MRA oppressed men reddit violence against men/women

>Straight talk on homophobia … on the Men’s Rights subreddit??

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Oh Reddit. Sometimes you make me so sad. Case in point: the 5,415 upvotes Redditors gave to this old dog of a story, a blatantly misogynist, and blatantly made-up, revenge-vasectomy tale from the “Best of Craigslist.” Mitigating factors: the fact that some commenters correctly labeled the story a hateful fake; the 4,582 downvotes the story got (resulting in “only” 833 net upvotes).

But sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised. Even as I was contemplating the idiotic reaction to this idiotic vasectomy story, I ran across another headline: “Does homophobia affect straight males too?” Good question. Weirdly, the post was from the Men’s Rights subreddit. Hoping for the best but fearing the worst, I took a look. Lo and behold, the post had actually inspired a real, honest discussion of the issues.

The OP set the stage with a few specific questions:

Have you ever hesitated to become close to another male for fear that it might be misinterpreted by someone else? Was there ever a time you resisted getting close to another male emotionally because you were afraid it might be seen as sexual? Does the fear of being called gay or a faggot ever change the way you behave in front of other males?

Among the answers there were of course a few jokes, including one that was actually sort of funny:

dontputsaltinyoureye 9 points

it has had a tremendous effect on my life. i am unable to wear my avril lavigne [shirt] in public due to the fear. WHY CAN I NOT WEAR MY AVRIL LAVIGNE SHIRT?!

And there was the requisite reference to Glee:

AGenericGoon 44 points

I am heterosexual, and watch/enjoy glee.

I will take this secret to the grave.

But there were also a number of bracingly honest comments, comments that would not be out of place on a feminist or LGBT message board. Some commenters talked about being gay-bashed — even though they aren’t gay. Others talked about how hetero-normative gender roles force men to keep quiet about their feelings:

TheBananaKing 27 points

Absolutely. all -normative behaviours box people in.

Straight guy here. … there’s an awful lot of restriction and anxiety in inter-male behaviour. You can’t ever be sad or hurt – only angry. You can’t extend comfort or affection towards another guy, except via humorous taunting / rivalry / aggression (eg play-fighting), unless you’re very, very drunk. You have to do this kind of… reverse double-entendre the entire time, translating everything into John Wayne before you speak or act it, and back again to understand others. It’s a pain in the ass.

Others offered more personal takes on what it’s like to be a straight guy who’s frequently taken to be gay:

ecartes 9 points

I talk with a lisp and dress really well. I’m also heterosexual.

Almost everyone I initially meet believes, nay, KNOWS, that I’m, ACTUALLY homosexual. It’s weird, living with the thought that everyone I meet thinks I’m gay. Although I will never know fully the oppression that some gay people face, I feel like I’ve felt a lot of it just from being perceived as gay. …

And perhaps the most unexpected of all:

soylentcoleslaw 33 points

If I acted on my normal impulses, I’d be extremely effeminate. I love cute things and cute clothes, I have subconscious feminine mannerisms, and I’d love a strong partner who makes me feel safe and who would take charge. I’ve never had a gay fantasy in my life. The thought of being with another man just doesn’t do it for me, but given what I want and who I naturally am, I’m said on numerous occasions how much easier my love life would be if it did. As it is, if I want to attract someone new, I have to tamp all that down and put on my reasonably masculine face, and maybe if I’m lucky, I can reveal some of that side of myself gradually. But I can’t be totally myself. Never. … So I go on pretending to be manly sometimes and hopefully don’t screw up.

Oh, sure, there were some answers that were bluntly homophobic — redwood9 states plainly that “I just hate fags … I hate all cocksuckers and those who bend over and take it in the ass” — but they made up a tiny minority of the comments, and were generally downvoted.

So what’s going on here? Has the Men’s Rights Subreddit suddenly become a beacon of open-mindedness? Not exactly. Most of those commenting in the topic don’t appear to be Men’s Rights regulars, but Redditors who were drawn to the topic when it appeared on Reddit’s main page. Here’s what someone who is a MR regular had to say:

aetheralloy 0 points

“Bro’s” and “bromance” is the term often used to shame men … Women (feminists) in particular love to use it. …

The really interesting question here isn’t if it affects males, but why women are both extremely homophobic towards gay males while also willing to use them as emotional buddies.

Yeah, damn those feminist women and their hatred of gay men!

So, no group hug just yet. But it’s good to see an outburst of good sense in a discussion forum that’s often pretty backwards.

It’s just a pity that the moderator of Men’s Rights remains convinced “that there is an international, feminist, antimale conspiracy,” as he puts it in the sidebar, and that the subreddit’s slogan remains “Earning scorn from feminists since March 19, 2008.”

Because, you know what? If you’re a guy feeling boxed in by normative gender roles, some of the best people in the world to talk to about it are, you know, feminists.

Categories
antifeminism discussion of the day men who should not ever be with women ever MGTOW misogyny western women suck

>The Stepford Solution

>From a discussion of feminist men on the perversely misnamed NiceGuy’s MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) forum. (Requires registration, so here’s a screencap.) There is so much wrongness packed into this brief comment; it’s really quite impressive.

Categories
funny idiocy men who should not ever be with women ever MGTOW misogyny

>Breaking News: Man Oppressed at Safeway!

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Woman oppressing men.

Women reading this site may not appreciate just how many ways men are oppressed in our society. So here’s a first-hand report from the battlefront, found on the Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) forum.

Let’s set the scene: our hero is out picking up a couple of things at a Safeway, when the first oppressor of men comes into view:

I walk in and there is a woman with a basket with maybe 10lbs worth of items in her left hand and a small item in her right, she not only walks very slowly but blocks the entire fucking space and almost nails an old man in the back of the leg with the basket. I literally wanted to push her the fuck out of the way.

Our hero manages to circumvent this obstacle without resorting to violence. Then — oh no! — some gay guys come into view! Just so you know, these were REAL gay guys. No, they weren’t actually having anal sex in the store while listening to Cher, but they didn’t need to be for our hero to figure out their secret. You see, our hero has highly tuned gay-detecting abilities.

Then its the two gay guys, how do i know they are gay? Please don’t say to me the PC bullshit you cant tell a dude is gay by how they act, feminized lispy speech has never EVER let me down 100% of the time, they were gay.

That settled, we move on to their dastardly behavior:

They happen to separate and take all of the spots at self check out making me wait even though they were clearly “together” then walking out these same two are lallygagging like the woman blocking me from exiting the store, I stood there for 5 seconds and just looked at them, like the self-importance meter is just running off the charts here!

Yes, yes it is.

Oh but now we come to the kicker. Brace yourself. It’s: A TEENAGE GIRL CROSSING THE STREET!!!

If you’re not already sitting down, please do so at once, as reading about this encounter may well chill you to your very bones: 

Driving back in the rain, visibility and braking power obviously reduced, I am making a left hand turn on A GREEN FUCKING ARROW, and little girl who is probably 15-16 years old is walking across the street on a DON”T FUCKING WALK sign … I slam on my brakes and FUCKING WAIL ON MY HORN at her. She gave me the “Doe in the headlights” look and just blinked at me, that’s it.

The worst part of it? Our hero is literally prohibited — by evil feminist laws and by the feminazi press — from simply running her down.

Sad part I can tell you what happens if I hit the girl, the headline would read “Man mows down helpless 15 year old girl, and is not in the least remorseful”. Also my insurance policy would have to pay a massive settlement out to her regardless because she was injured or killed even if i am found 99% not at fault a 1% at fault claim would still probably net her or her family a massive amount of money that no one deserves for this Darwinian fucking reject.

Oh, the humanity!

Brave, brave man, please continue Going Your Own Way.

Categories
antifeminism hypocrisy misogyny MRA violence against men/women

>Paul Elam’s Vanishing Post: Blaming and Mocking Rape Victims

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Well, this is interesting. Last night, idly perusing the latest posts by blogs on my Enemies List I noticed a new post by Paul Elam. It was a doozy, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Under the seemingly innocuous title “Challenging the Etiology of Rape,” the post mocked and blamed rape victims for the crime of getting raped. I copied the most obnoxious bits onto my computer, planning to write a post about it.

Now it appears Elam has deleted the post, and the comments associated with it. [NOTE: Apparently the vanishing post was actually the result of an issue with the web host. It’s now up again. On to the content of his post.]

Here, minus a little of his rhetorical huffing and puffing, is the basic thesis of his post: 

I have ideas about women who spend evenings in bars hustling men for drinks, playing on their sexual desires so they can get shit faced on the beta dole; paying their bar tab with the pussy pass. And the women who drink and make out, doing everything short of sex with men all evening, and then go to his apartment at 2:00 a.m..  Sometimes … these women end up being the “victims” of rape.

But are these women asking to get raped?…

They are freaking begging for it.

Damn near demanding it. …

[T]here are a lot of women who get pummeled and pumped because they are stupid (and often arrogant) enough to walk though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.

What’s there to say to that? It’s odious, simply odious. Anyone who makes such an argument thereby destroys whatever tiny bit of credibility, whatever moral authority, they once might have had to speak about rape, domestic violence, or, really any violence at all against women or men. Anyone who makes such an argument forfeits the right to be taken seriously on the issue of rape, or, really, on any issue at all.

By Elam’s logic, any man who gets drunk and hooks up with a woman he’s only recently met is “damn near demanding” to be falsely accused of rape, is “walk[ing] though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE [ACCUSE] ME neon sign glowing above [his] empty little narcissistic head.”

Hey, he should have known better, right?

By Elam’s logic, any man who gets himself sent to prison through an act of his own is “damn near demanding” to be raped, is “walk[ing] though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above [his] empty little narcissistic head.”

Hey, he should have known better, right?

By Elam’s logic, any man who works in a profession where occupational injuries are relatively more common is “damn near demanding” to be injured or killed, is “walk[ing] though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH … neon sign glowing above [his] empty little narcissistic head.”

Hey, he should have known better, right?

By Elam’s logic, any man who joins the Armed Forces is “damn near demanding” to be killed, is “walk[ing] though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE [KILL ME] neon sign glowing above [his] empty little narcissistic head.”

Hey, he should have known better, right?

By Elam’s logic, any man who crosses a busy street without waiting for the “walk” sign is “damn near demanding” to be hit by a car, is “walk[ing] though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE [RUN ME OVER] neon sign glowing above [his] empty little narcissistic head.”

Hey, he should have known better, right?

By Elam’s logic, any man who does anything at all that might possibly increase the odds of anything bad happening to him is “damn near demanding” to face horrific consequences, is “walk[ing] though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE [HARM] ME neon sign glowing above [his] empty little narcissistic head.”

By Elam’s logic, neither men nor women should ever leave the house.

Oh, but wait, most accidents happen at home (just as most rapes involve people already known to the victim, not random strangers at bars). So anyone staying at home is “damn near demanding” to trip and fall down the stairs, is “walk[ing] though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE [INJURE] ME neon sign glowing above [his or her] empty little narcissistic head.”

I guess we’re all empty-headed conniving bitches. Each and every one of us on planet earth. But the only people Elam thinks to apply his logic to are female rape victims. That says a lot, and none of it good.

NOTE: Elam has (among other things) banned me from commenting on his site, and relagates all critical comments on his website to a special board for “feminists and manginas,” so any comments he makes here will be deleted.

NOTE #2: Just to forestall what could become an endless and pointless debate in the comments: Elam is not saying, as he puts it, that women “are literally asking men to rape them” — that is, walking up and saying “rape me please.” That would be absurd. He is speaking more colloquially, as am I.

Categories
antifeminism evil women homophobia hypocrisy men who should not ever be with women ever MGTOW misogyny Uncategorized western women suck

>Anglo-haters gonna Anglo-hate

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Bill O’Reilly secretly spreading Feminazi man-hate.

The fellow behind the charmingly named Anglobitch blog — devoted to the notion that “Anglo-American Women Suck!” — has delivered up a rambling, loopy rant about hate crime legislation, which essentially suggests that the very existence of such legislation reflects an “inherent, all-pervasive hatred of men” in the “Anglosphere.”

For while Hate Crime is prohibited by each Anglo-American national state, pan-anglosphere misandry is actively promoted by each state against its male citizens.

His first example of this is … Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. I’m not sure exactly when Murdoch was promoted from media mogul to head of state, but never mind. Our Anglo-blogger is off and running: 

The Murdochratic media ceaseless vilifies men as outcasts, misfits and sexual deviants while exalting women as paragons of virtue, beauty and intellect. This anti-male propaganda is at least as relentless as the Nazi media campaign against the Jews –– but even more insidious, since its agendas are covert and unstated. … And, as in the Third Reich, hatred of the outcast group (in this case, men) has been fully normalized since the rise of gender-feminism in the late sixties.

Uh, yeah, that agenda is pretty … covert. I don’t remember there being a lot of Jews at the top of the Nazi party. But it seems like every time I turn on Fox News I see someone from “the outcast group (in this case, men)” spewing what to the untrained ear sounds like reactionary nonsense. (I mean, there’s Gretchen Carlson, but she’s got to share the set with Steve Doocy and that other dude.) But apparently I can’t see Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck for what they are: footsoldiers of our feminazi overlords. Er, overladies? Overwomyn?

Our Anglobitcher then moves from the anti-male evils of Murdoch to the anti-male evils of the law. Apparently divorce law is so biased towards women that

many Anglo-American women consciously plan for a ‘starter marriage’ to fleece some unsuspecting male [which] proves that malicious misandry is rapidly becoming a female lifestyle-choice.

After a brief denunciation of the welfare state — men pay the taxes and women benefit! — Anglobitcher comes to the US military draft, for which only males have to register “despite them being tacitly viewed as Untermenschen by law, government and the media.” Hey, I didn’t like having to register, and I don’t think any one of either sex should have to, but, uh, no one has been drafted in the US since the Vietnam war. 

So the first of his examples of state oppression is based on the idea that Rupert Murdoch is The State, not to mention some sort of feminazi. And his last is based on guys having to sign what is for all practical purposes a meaningless scrap of paper. The Anglobitcher nevertheless concludes “that males represent the primary victims of ‘hate crime’ across the Anglosphere.”

Oh, but he’s not quite done. For what angry denunciation of hate crime laws is complete without, you know, some good old-fashioned homophobia, served with a side order of transsexual-bashing:

It is also telling that the only male groups effectively protected by pan-Anglosphere hate-crime laws are gays and transsexuals. This is entirely to be expected: such males simulate the female role which, as we have endlessly observed, is routinely and blindly exalted by Anglo-Saxon culture. When the only way for men to achieve protection from ‘hate crime’ is to adopt homosexuality (or female genitalia) the true nature of Anglo ‘patriarchy’ reveals itself. Only women and their mincing mimics can enter that charmed circle; the healthy, potent male never can.

Dude, you’re an Anglodouche.

EDIT: Mr. Anglobitch has responded to this post. His response is actually a bit more coherent than the original post, though, admittedly, that’s not much of an accomplishment.
 

Categories
antifeminism further reading

>Further Reading: The Gender Pay Gap

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Men’s Rights Myth: The Pay Gap between men and women doesn’t exist, but if it does, it’s because women choose to take lesser paying jobs, or because they decide to have kids, or because men work more dangerous jobs, or something.

The Truth: It’s complicated. Some of those things do make a difference. But no matter how you crunch the numbers or spin the results, there is a persistent pay gap between men and women that can’t be explained away by life choices or any of the other factors that MRAs and others suggest may “really” account for the differences.

You want the gory details? Check out these articles, studies and blog posts.

AAUW (American Association of University Women): The Gender Pay Gap

Women have made remarkable strides in education during the past three decades, but these gains have yet to translate into full equity in pay — even for college-educated women who work full time. A typical college-educated woman 25 years and older working full time earns $50,000 a year compared to $70,000 for college-educated male workers 25 years and older — a difference of $20,000! …

For the entire full-time workforce, a typical woman earned $35,745 compared with $46,367 for a typical man, a pay difference of $10,622.

EXAMINING THE CRACKS IN THE CEILING: A SURVEY OF CORPORATE DIVERSITY PRACTICES OF THE S&P 100 (Calvert investments)

The “Glass Ceiling” is still a problem (emphasis added):

We remain disheartened by the glacial pace at which women and minorities are reaching the upper echelons of power. … Of the 100 CEOs represented [in the S&P 100], 92 are Caucasian males. While women make up approximately 18% of director positions within the S&P 100, they represent only 8.4% of the highest paid positions within the same group of companies, positions that provide the opportunities to develop the expertise and networks needed for future board-level appointments.

Why Do Women Still Earn Less Than Men? by Laura Fitzpatrick (Time magazine)

U.S. women still earned only 77 cents on the male dollar in 2008, according to the latest census statistics. (That number drops to 68% for African-American women and 58% for Latinas.) …

Once you control for factors like education and experience … women’s earnings rise to 81% of men’s. Factor in occupation, industry and whether they belong to a union, and they jump to 91%. That’s partly because women tend to cluster in lower-paying fields. …

But industry doesn’t tell the whole story. Women earned less than men in all 20 industries and 25 occupation groups surveyed by the Census Bureau in 2007 …  Female secretaries … earn just 83.4% as much as male ones. And those who pick male-dominated fields earn less than men too: female truck drivers … earn just 76.5% of the weekly pay of their male counterparts.

Women’s Earnings: Work Patterns Partially Explain Difference between Men’s and Women’s Earnings (GAO report, 2003) (Emphasis added)

Of the many factors that account for differences in earnings between men and women, our model indicated that work patterns are key. Specifically, women have fewer years of work experience, work fewer hours per year, are less likely to work a full-time schedule, and leave the labor force for longer periods of time than men. Other factors that account for earnings differences include industry, occupation, race, marital status, and job tenure. When we account for differences between male and female work patterns as well as other key factors, women earned, on average, 80 percent of what men earned in 2000. While the difference fluctuated in each year we studied, there was a small but statistically significant decline in the earnings difference over the time period. Even after accounting for key factors that affect earnings, our model could not explain all of the difference in earnings between men and women. … we cannot determine whether this remaining difference is due to discrimination or other factors that may affect earnings.

Blaming Women’s Choices for the Gender Pay Gap, by Hilary M. Lips

The language attributing women’s lower pay to their own lifestyle choices is seductive—in an era when women are widely believed to have overcome the most serious forms of discrimination … Women work in lower-paid occupations; on average they work fewer paid hours per week and fewer paid weeks per year than men do; their employment is more likely than men’s to be discontinuous. …

However, a closer look reveals that the language of “choice” obscures larger social forces that maintain the wage gap and the very real constraints under which women labor. The impact of discrimination, far from being limited to the portion of the wage gap that cannot be accounted for by women’s choices, is actually deeply embedded in and constrains these choices.

See also:

The Gender Wage Gap: Debunking the Rationalizations, by Hilary M. Lips

Confronting the Gender Gap in Wages, by Deborah Kolb, Judith Williams, and Carol Frohlinger 

Barry Deutsch at Alas, a blog has written a series of excellent posts analyzing various antifeminist pay gap myths. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights:

Wage Gap Myth: The pay gap only exists because men work so many more hours than women.

[T]he argument is generally that the pay gap … has nothing to do with discrimination. … Women are paid less because they work so many fewer hours …

According to a [Department of Labor] web page in 2001 … comparing only hourly wages, women were paid 83.2% of what men were paid in 2000. 83.2% is a noticible difference from the 76% figure for weekly full-time wages – but it still leaves the majority of the pay gap unaccounted for.

Myth: The pay gap only exists because women take time off from work to raise kids.

[T]he average female worker has 12.79 years of full-time experience, while the average male worker has 17.41. This difference accounted for between 26% and 30% of the total wage gap.

Myth: The pay gap only exists because women haven’t been in the workplace as long as men

In this view, the pay gap is only still around because women only recently entered the workforce; as such, women haven’t had as much time to work their way up the employment ladder to the well-paid positions. …

[E]xactly how long must we wait…? A woman who had been in the workforce five years when the Equal Pay Act was passed [in 1963] might well be retired by now, and the pay gap still hasn’t gone away.

Myth: The best way to measure the pay gap is to consider only the young and the childless

[T]he effects of discrimination add up over a lifetime. So, for example, losing a single job offer or promotion usually won’t make a big difference; but dozens of such small losses over the course of women’s careers eventually add up to a big wage gap.

Myth: If women really got paid less for similar work, then employers would replace all of the male workers with female workers

Some industries have, in effect, saved money by gradually replacing a male work force with a female work force. But there are many reasons employers might retain a male workforce, even though … men are paid more on average.

Evidence of Discrimination

[E]xamples that clearly demonstrate that economic discrimination against women, contrary to the claims of the anti-feminists, is a real problem.

Myth: The Wage Gap is Caused by Men’s Higher Pay for Dangerous Jobs

It’s true that men are much more likely to die or to be injured on the job than women. Surely no one would be willing to risk their life without getting paid a premium for it; and no reasonable person would argue that extra pay for extra danger is unjust. …

The problem is, there is no premium for dangerous jobs. And since the “danger premium” doesn’t really exist, it can’t explain the wage gap.

Myth: The CONSAD report clearly refutes the notion that there is pay discrimination

There are important kinds of direct employer discrimination which CONSAD’s methods cannot measure or disprove. For example, some employers are more likely to hire women to lower-paid positions and men to higher-paid positions. (Empirical testing – by sending male and female testers to apply for the same jobs — has proven that this sort of sexist occupational sorting sometimes happens.) … 

[P]robably the most important kind of sexism going into the wage gap is the sexism of unquestioned assumptions; unquestioned assumptions about who does the housework, unquestioned assumptions about who does the child-rearing, unquestioned assumptions about innate ability, and most of all, unquestioned assumptions about how jobs are designed for people with wives at home.

I call this last factor the “Father Knows Best” economy; most jobs implicitly assume that workers have wives at home who are taking care of the kids and house, so that these responsibilities never need to be accommodated by employers. Maybe that assumption made sense half a century ago, but it doesn’t make sense now; and by continuing to implicitly make this assumption, our economy is making it unfairly difficult for caretakers (who are usually women) to have careers.

Categories
further reading links rape violence against men/women

>Men’s Rights Myth: False Rape Accusations

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Men’s Rights Movement Claim: A high percentage — 40% or more — of rape accusations are false.

The Facts: This claim is dubious. The studies claiming these high numbers have been debunked. Better studies estimate the rate of false accusations as being in the single digits, generally in a range from 2-8%.

Here are some useful posts and papers on the subject. You’ll notice they don’t all agree with one another; It’s a complicated subject. 

False Rape Allegations Are Rare (YesMeansYes)
Excerpt:

The reputable, methodologically sound reviews put the frequency of false reports in the single-digit percentages. There are people who, for propaganda reasons, keep saying that the incidence of false reports is much higher. They create these figures with biased reviews or intellectually dishonest mislabeling. … A new study … based on a review of every single rape allegation made to a US university police department — the study does not disclose which school — over a ten year period. The result: 5.9 percent false allegations.

Critique of Eugene Kanin’s Study Of False Rape Reports (Alas, a blog)
Excerpt:

Eugene Kanin famously found that 41%, or perhaps 50%, of rapes reported to police are false. Kanin’s study is both badly designed and unverifiable; more reliable studies have found that between 2% and 8% of rapes reported to police are false reports.

Here’s the Kanin study being discussed. (pdf).

False Allegations Of Rape Not Common – Or Are They? (Alas, a blog)
More on Kanin.

Report on False Reporting Of Non-Stranger Rapes (abyss2hope)
A discussion of a paper that notes:

In the research literature, estimates for the percentage of sexual assault reports that are false have varied widely, virtually across the entire possible spectrum. For example, a very comprehensive review article documented estimates from 1.5% to 90% (Rumney, 2006). However, very few of these estimates are based on research that could be considered credible. Most are reported without the kind of information that would be needed to evaluate their reliability and validity. A few are little more than published opinions, based either on personal experience or a non-systematic review (e.g. of police files, interviews with police investigators, or other information with unknown reliability and validity).

The paper reviews recent research and notes that the most credible studies find “the rate of false reporting for sexual assault is in the range of 2-8%.”

NOTE: the link to the study on abyss2hope is broken. This one works. (It’s a pdf.)

Why it’s so hard to quantify false rape charges, by Emily Bazelon and Rachael Larimore (Slate) 

[I]sn’t the rate of false rape charges an empirical question, with a specific answer that isn’t vulnerable to ideological twisting? Yes and no. There has been a burst of research on this subject. Some of it is careful, but much of it is questionable. While most of the good studies converge at a rate of about 8 percent to 10 percent for false rape charges, the literature isn’t quite definitive enough to stamp out the far higher estimates.

Anti-feminist myths debunked (Pandagon)
Contains an interesting discussion of the Kanin study.

Claims about McDowell’s research into false rape allegations are not credible (Feminist Critics)
Discussion of another study that found a high percentage of false accusations.

Why Women Allegedly Lie About Rape (abyss2hope)
Also discusses McDowell’s Air Force study

The myth of women’s false accusations of domestic violence and rape and misuse of protection orders (Michael Flood)
Excerpt:

Myth: Women routinely make up allegations of domestic violence and rape, including to gain advantage in family law cases. And women use protection orders to remove men from their homes or deny contact with children.

Facts: The risk of domestic violence increases at the time of separation. Most allegations of domestic violence in the context of family law proceedings are made in good faith and with support and evidence for their claims. Rates of false accusations of rape are very low. Women living with domestic violence often do not take out protection orders and do so only as a last resort. Protection orders provide an effective means of reducing women’s vulnerability to violence.

Note: I think this paper lowballs the estimate of false rape accusations. See the YesMeansYes article above for what I think is a more reasonable take.

False Allegations, Recantations, and Unfounding in the Context of Sexual Assault, Oregon Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Task Force (pdf)
Explains why recantations cannot be taken as definitive proof that an allegation is false.

Because recantation is used so frequently by victims to halt criminal justice involvement, it should never be seen, in and of itself, as indicative of a false report.

Another kind of false allegation:

The myth of false accusations of child abuse (Michael Flood)
Excerpt:

Myth: Women routinely make false accusations of child abuse or domestic violence to gain advantage in family law proceedings and to arbitrarily deny their ex-partners’ access to the children.

Facts: Allegations of child abuse are rare. False allegations are rare; False allegations are made by fathers and mothers at equal rates; The child abuse often takes place in families where there is also domestic violence; Allegations of child abuse rarely result in the denial of parental contact.

(Note: Most data cited from Australia.)

Rape Myths Past and Present

An article in the British magazine New Statesman, by Joanna Bourke, Professor of History at Birkbeck and author of Rape: A History from the 1860s to the Present (Virago, 2007). Excerpt:

[W]hat is the risk of an accused man being falsely accused of rape? Popular prejudices estimate that around half of rape victims are lying, but a major Home Office research project in 2000-2003 concluded that only three per cent of rape allegations were false. Indeed, contrary to the notion that men are at risk of being falsely accused, it is much more common for actual rapists to get away with their actions. Around four-fifths of rapes are never reported to the police. And only five per cent of rapes reported to the police ever end in a conviction. This is the lowest attrition rate of any country in Europe, except for Ireland.

None of this is to say that people aren’t falsely accused — of rape, and of other crimes — or falsely convicted. They are, and it’s a tragedy. Here are two groups that advocate for the the falsely accused and falsely convicted:

The Innocence Project

The National Center for Reason and Justice

NOTE: I have added text and links to this post since I originally posted it.

Categories
Uncategorized

>Top Ten Dumb Things to Assume About Me and This Blog

>

Actually, there’s no “me” in “assumption.”

This is a note mainly intended for my MRA readers, mostly so I won’t have to deal with all this crap in comments again and again.

1) That I am anti-male, or against rights for men. Nope! I’m a man. I like having rights. The same rights as women. I am opposed to the retrograde, self-described “Men’s Rights Movement,” which I think is a bad thing for men and women both.

2) That every post I make about an individual Men’s Rights Activist or antifeminist is intended as a critique of the Men’s Rights Movement as a whole. Nope! Not all feminists agree on everything; not all MRAs agree on everything. When I critique an individual, you should take that as a critique of that individual. Though sometimes the things these individuals think are things that lots of MRAs think, which brings us to to our next item in the list.

3) That every post I make that critiques ideas and attitudes that pervade the MRM is an attack on each and every MRA. Nope! However widespread these ideas and attitudes are, there are invariably MRAs who don’t believe these things, and my critique obviously does not apply to them.

4) That because I am a feminist, I am somehow responsible for everything ever said or done by every other feminist. Nope! I am one dude. I am responsible for the things I say and do. I am not responsible for the things I do not say or do. The fact that some feminist thinks some thing does not necessarily mean that I think that thing. I might, I might not. (This applies more broadly: The fact that some feminist thinks some thing does not necessarily mean that all other feminists, or even most, or even many, think that thing.)

5) That I think women are pure as the driven snow and that men are all evil. Nope! I am aware, as every other human being I’ve ever meet is aware, that both men and women can do horrible, horrible things. Individual women abuse children, kill people, and screw over men and other women alike. They basically do every bad thing in the world that men do. You want to see how horrible some women can be? Watch the documentary Dear Zachary. It’s on Netflix instant watch. It’s really depressing. Still, there are areas in which men, on average, behave worse than women, on average. Men, for example, commit the overwhelming majority of violent crimes; they are responsible for the overwhelming majority of rapes. Acknowledging these facts is not the same as saying that all women are angels. They’re not.

6) That I think every bad thing in the world is all the fault of men. See above.

7) That everything I post on this blog is a deadly serious indictment of the MRM. Nope! Sometimes I post stuff that relates more broadly to men’s issues. Sometimes I make jokes. Sometimes I post odd pictures.

8) That I should immediately write a giant policy statement/rebuttal/manifesto on any given subject that any commenter brings up at any time. Nope! I have my own agenda, and I’m doing things on my own schedule. I may not think your pet issue is all that important. And even if I do, I may not get around to posting about it right away. There are a lot of important issues, and I’m one dude. If any of this makes you unhappy, well, you don’t have to read this blog.

9) That I am interested in having unending discussions with people who misrepresent things I’ve said, or things other feminists have said, or who simply dismiss research conducted by feminists without even reading it. Nope!

10) That I really care what MRAs think of this blog. Nope! Put bluntly, this blog isn’t for you. It’s for all the people in the world who aren’t you. Actually, that’s not 100% true: If this blog convinces an MRA or two to stop being an MRA, that would be cool. I don’t really expect that to happen, but, hey, I won’t complain if it does. You’re free to post comments here, like everyone else, but I’m not trying to win your approval.

Categories
comments policy

>Comments policy

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I want there to be lively debate in my comments section. I’m not going to ban anyone for disagreeing with me. But I have to enforce the following rules to fend off the forces of chaos and douchebaggery:

Registration is required in order to post comments.

My comment policy in short: I’m mostly hands-off, but if you’re persistently offensive, disruptive, or tedious, I’ll delete comments; if you continue, you’ll get a short-term ban or, in rare cases, be banned permanently. Big no nos: nasty personal attacks and/or slurs. I usually warn people first; if you persist after a warning, expect at least a short-term ban.

The details:

Don’t say things so vile and hateful that if you said them to Gandhi, he’d punch you in the head. Calling someone an idiot is fine. Lots of people are idiots. Just use caution when moving much beyond this level of invective. Back-and-forth namecalling is tedious for everything.

A few specific things that will get your comment (and perhaps you) banned as soon as I see it: the words “cunt” or “faggot,” used to disparage people or groups, references to sex organs, hateful slurs, gratuitously nasty personal attacks, flagrant lies about me or anyone else, threats.

If you regularly post comments that violate these basic guidelines, you’re done here. I’ll delete every comment you make, even those that don’t violate the guidelines.

REALLY IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If your comment simply doesn’t post, it’s not because I deleted it. It’s because Blogger’s spam filter has filtered it. The spam filter is unreliable, but unfortunately I can’t turn it off. If your comment follows the guidelines, and wasn’t filtered because, say, it was full of profanity and slurs, I will un-filter it as soon as I see it. That may take awhile, as I am not always in front of my computer.

EDIT: ADDITIONAL RULES:

Stay on topic, more or less: We all go off-topic from time to time. If you’re constantly going off topic in a way that’s tedious or disruptive, I’ll delete your comments.

No more than two posts in a row, unless you are responding specifically to arguments from other commenters and want to break it up into different comments. If you have an afterthought, or a correction, and want to post a second comment, that’s perfectly fine. If your comment is so long it needs a second part, that’s ok, but seriously think about being more concise. Posting every thought that pops into your head in comment after comment? No. Blog comments are supposed to be about dialogue, not monologue.

Don’t quote entire articles. If you want to post about something you found elsewhere, post a brief excerpt and/or summary and a link. Don’t post the whole thing.


Don’t misrepresent what other commenters say or put words in their mouth. This is already covered in the “don’t lie” bit above, but I want to reiterate it. If you misunderstand something someone else says, or have a different interpretation (and a good argument to back that up), that’s fine. But repeatedly misrepresenting others, particularly after they have corrected you, will get your comments deleted.